Realism Genre - Oil painting on canvas -signed and dated 1907 

canvas size 10x14" - Frame size 17x20"

Artist Biography

Harry Herman Roseland (1866/68 - 1950) was active/lived in New York.He is known for Narrative, genre, portrait and interior painting.Genre* painting enjoyed tremendous popularity in nineteenth-century America. It was a style that allowed a painter to tell a story, evoke an emotion, tell a joke, or educate. Largely superseded in the twentieth century by changes in popular taste and improvements in photographic technology, genre painting nevertheless remains a strong sub current in popular taste. One of the most notable painters in this mode was Harry Roseland.Roseland, born in Brooklyn, New York, matured as an artist while waves of change were sweeping over the art world. Largely self-taught, he chose to paint what he saw. He received some education in art under James Barnard Whittaker in Brooklyn, and at first painted some landscapes and still lifes, but his natural flair was for telling a story in his paintings. His subject matter was at first highly sentimental and heavily influenced by fashionable taste: smartly turned-out young women, old folks, and idealized farm scenes. He abandoned the mawkishness that is the downfall of so many self-educated artists when he found a topic that was close to home and yet largely unnoticed: the post-Civil War blacks who formed the underpinning of Northeastern society.Roseland's clever, skillful scenes of homely activities - such as checkers or letter-reading, were remarkably dispassionate and candid for the time, though to modern eyes they may seem condescending and dated. They capture with gentle humor of a way of life that existed through the first half of the twentieth century and has now vanished. Harry Roseland never left his native Brooklyn, dying in New York in 1950, but enjoyed a remarkable success as an artist in his chosen specialty, improving and maturing continually. The archetype of the independent American artist, he never traveled to Europe to study or observe, choosing to carve his own path.During his career as an artist he exhibited: Brooklyn Art Club, 1888 (gold), Boston, Mass., 1900 (medal), 1904 (gold), Charleston Expo, 1902 (medal), National Academy of Design, 1898 (prize), Brooklyn Society of Artists, 1930 (prize), American Art Society, Philadelphia, 1902 (medal), 1907 (gold), Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Art Institute of Chicago.His memberships include: Brooklyn Arts Club, Brooklyn Society of Artists, Brooklyn Painters Society, Salmagundi Club.

A beautiful piece that will add to your décor!